India | Stringent virus testing criteria may mask toll

A British citizen appeared at a public hospital in India’s capital with a cough, difficulty breathing and a private clinic’s referral for a coronavirus test. She was turned away.

Indian authorities said yesterday that they are not expanding testing for the virus, as most affected nations are doing, despite mounting criticism from some experts that the limited tests could mask the true toll of the disease in the world’s second most populous country.

The World Health Organization has urged countries to test as many people as possible to curb the pandemic, but India has taken a different approach, limiting testing to those who have traveled from affected countries or come in contact with a confirmed case and shown symptoms after two weeks of quarantine.

Indian authorities said the WHO guidance didn’t apply in India because the spread of the disease has been less severe than elsewhere. Balaram Bharghava, who heads the Indian Council of Medical Research, India’s top medical research body, said the guidance was “premature” for India, where community transmission hadn’t yet been detected.

“Therefore it creates more fear, more paranoia and more hype,” he said.

The British patient sent home from the hospital last week in New Delhi didn’t fulfill India’s testing criteria.

The woman, who requested anonymity fearing business consequences for her employer, said she told hospital officials that she may have had contact with a coronavirus patient in her hospitality sector job, but couldn’t be sure.

After trying and failing to be tested a second time, she left India this week for France, where her family lives, and which President Emmanuel Macron said Monday was “at war” with the virus, announcing extreme measures to curb the disease.

Indian authorities have justified their strict testing limits as a way to keep a deluge of people from demanding tests that would cost the government money it needs to combat other diseases such as tuberculosis, malnutrition and HIV/AIDs.

ICMR said that there was no need to offer such testing more widely. However, authorities said they’re preparing for community spread by bolstering their lab testing infrastructure.

As a result of the stringent criteria, sick people with potential exposure to the new virus are being sent home, and some experts fear that India’s caseload could be much higher than government statistics indicate.

Bharghava said virus infections in India can still be traced back to people who traveled into the country from affected locales. He said if community transmission is detected, then testing protocols would be revised.

Authorities have confirmed 126 cases, most of which have been “imported” — linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad.

India is conducting only about 90 tests per day, despite having the capacity for as many as 8,000. So far, 11,500 people have been tested. AP